Tech in Aerospace and Defense Overview
Although aerospace and defense is reliably strong in tech hiring and resistant to short-term trends (it even weathered the pandemic), the industry’s tech hiring rebound has cooled considerably this year. While federal and private spending buoyed optimism heading into the year, tech job postings in the first two quarters of 2023 slowed down, stabilizing around 2021 levels as companies lasered in on opportunities best fit to their existing capability and customer sets.
U.S. Tech Job Postings in Aerospace and Defense
January 2019 through June 2023
Demand for tech talent in aerospace and defense fluctuated in the first five months of 2023 and has been mostly flat since May, but showed a slight uptick as we closed out the quarter. Although the number of postings added for the first half of 2023 is lower year over year, it is at about the same level as 2021. Aerospace and defense companies are often assured generous Pentagon funding, which means executives within these contractors are often comfortable with maintaining a certain rate of hiring, especially given the long-term need to staff next-generation, technically complicated projects.